A Pretend “Milestone”: More Creative Spin from Obama’s Campaign
By Deb Cupples on May 21, 2008 at 8:57 PM in Current Affairs
Just after Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama last night in Kentucky’s primary (65% – 30%), the Obama campaign sent out an email signed by Obama himself. The relevant text is this:
"[I]t’s clear that tonight we have reached a major milestone on this journey.
"We have won an absolute majority of all the delegates chosen by the people in this Democratic primary process."
Basically, Obama used 10 words to describe what for months has only required 2: "pledged" and "delegates."
How does winning a majority of pledged delegates qualify as a "major milestone"? It doesn’t, because winning the majority of pledged delegates does not make Obama the nominee. Period.
Under the Democratic Party’s un-democratic rules, super-delegates can vote for whomever they want (and they can switch), regardless of the pledged-delegate totals or popular-vote count.
Facts aside, some media have given air time to Obama’s surrogates to create potentially misleading headlines and sound bites about the pretend "milestone."
For example, a CNN video shows John Roberts interviewing Tom Daschel, who tries to persuade viewers how important this pretend "milestone" is.
Roberts asks : "If it doesn’t mean it’s the end, what exactly does it mean and why point it out?"
Daschel re-states that it’s very important.
Roberts asks (again): "But what does it mean?"
Daschel spoke but failed to adequately explain.
It’s all about creating vague impressions, which is why (I suspect) that Obama’s email doesn’t talk about winning a "majority of pledged delegates" — but instead talks about winning a "majority of all the delegates chosen by the people."
This gives the impression that the will of the majority of voters is to name Obama as the nominee.
Actually, the popular vote is the best indicator of the "will of the people," and we won’t know which candidate has won the popular vote until after all primaries are finished on June 3.
Thus, Obama’s vague claims that most Dem voters are on his side is — at best — premature. Mission Accomplished, anyone?
Another issue: many of Obama’s victories do not necessarily reflect the "will fo the people," because more than a dozen of his victories were in states that had caucuses (not primaries).
Caucuses tend to draw far fewer voters than primaries do, partly because caucuses are held in a shorter period of time. Generally, caucuses attract people with flexible schedules and people who are politically active (hardly a representative sampling of most of America’s voters).
That’s why caucuses are less representative of a state’s voting population (i.e., less democratic). Check out the examples below (3 caucus states v. 3 primary states):
...................................Delegates................#VotersWyoming (caucus) ..……..12…………………….8,753
Georgia (primary)………….12………………1,046,485
Hawaii (caucus)…………….17…………………..37,247
Rhode Island(primary)……18…………………184,904
Iowa (caucus)………………..45…………………….2,501
Oklahoma (primary)……….38…………………401,230
.
The Caucuses: fewer than 50,000 people decided who got
Wyoming’s, Hawaii’s and Rhode Island’s combined 74 delegates.
The Primaries: more than
1.6 million people decided who got Georgia’s, Rhode
Island’s and Oklahoma’s combined 68 delegates.
In short, at least 32 times more voters participated in the states’ primaries listed above than in the caucuses — yet more delegates were awarded based on the caucuses.
The upshot: Obama’s having won delegates from more than a dozen caucuses has made him appear more popular than he may actually be among the broader population of those states’ Democrats.
Between now and the convention, super-delegates must decide which candidate will have a better chance of beating John McCain in November — an election that won’t be about caucuses, disproportionately weighted delegates, odd arithmetic, or clever spin.
November will involve a straight, winner-take-all system of capturing states’ electoral
votes based on how the actual majority of a state’s voters vote.
Memeorandum has commentary.
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